I thought that it would be a good idea to open this post regarding the connection of an Ethernet PHY to Arduino Due, given that I still revising a couple of approaches I have on hand. The first one belongs to Atmel (doc11153). The second one is my own idea. Let's start talking about the first one which looks realizable and later on, my own approach.
As most of you may know, the core inside Arduino Due (SAM3X8E) integrates an EMAC module to implement a 10/100 MAC compatible with the IEEE 802.3 standard. The approach of Atmel evolves around to the idea of connect an external Physical layer transceiver (or Ethernet PHY) by Media Independent Interface (MII) or Reduced Media Independent Interface (RMII). Then, they made a comparison between both considering frequency, cost and manufacturers. Finally, they present the implementation using a 10/100 Mbps fast ethernet physical layer TX/FX single chip transceiver (DM9161) set in RMII mode with a 50MHZ crystal connected to the development kit SAM3X-EK using a HTTP demo under BeRTOS.
I have planned, as I did with the CAN bus approach, to run the demo to familiarize with their approach.
OK. Now my approach: I'd been thinking to wire directly the Ethernet MAC embedded inside Arduino Due with an off-chip Ethernet PHY (built-in can apply also) and add the correspondent coupler and an Ethernet connector. Then, as I did with the CAN, I will start to port part of the SAM3X-EK 32-b Ethernet libraries to Arduino Due. I haven't made up my mind yet for the phy but it could be like DP83848C.
As you may have noticed, my approach is not original. I did read similar approaches in this forum but I have no heard of anyone working on one yet (ArgusTech? Markus_L811?). So here we go. Any comments and more ideas are very welcome.
April 03, 2013, 10:49:00 PM - I just removed the attachment with a non-working EMAC library (I will publish in github the new working EMAC library very soon).
EDIT [05-15-2016]:
Here a link for the EMAC demo library:
https://github.com/elechouse/EMAC-DEMOI f someone want to try it, I'd recommend to do it with the TAIJIUINO Due Pro R3 w/ Programmer and Ethernet PHY module.
http://www.elechouse.com/elechouse/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2230-p